Transcripts For CSPAN Internet Policy And Startups 20150219

Tells them that someone is in the rim and that is more efficient. If you look at it over uber, this is taking capital that was being underutilized and employing it in a more productive way. Anyway you have capital that is underutilized, anywhere that there is a large labor of whole that is not using capital these are areas that will be disrupted in the next 10 years. The second question, i do not have any signs or evidence for this, but i have toys been very optimistic about the likely impact of future technology. The way i try to think about it, there are two possible outcomes. If you put this in star trek terms, you have the United Federation of planets where everybody cooperates and everyone has the ability to achieve personal enlightenment and personal best or you have the board, where everybody is nobody. It is one giant collective. These are two very different futures that come from the same set of technologies. I have boys imagined it would be like the federation and less like the board. I think you could look at it from the hash but there are many problems that need solving. At a mobile level, it is not connected. There are so many big ticket problems to get solved that over the next few years i think that it is hugely exciting and the progress that is being made already, i think that you mentioned the change in automotive space, there are so many big items like the number of people who get killed on the roads. Things like that. Those are being driven down. The idea that our kids will speak to their children and talk about a time when thousands of people got killed on the roads. There are so many things, these really big tickets, that technology will help. I think i am really optimistic. I look at the way that we toggle between the physical realworld and our digital world. We used to view those as very separate identities, then they started to blend. Today, the mobile phone is that bridge. We are constantly going to the mobile phone. Over time, as Technology Becomes more pervasive and more seamless, it will become less intrusive. It will become a more natural and intuitive experience. Look at the way that we talk with computers. If you go back in time, we used punch cards. It you just looked at it, you didnt understand it. At the computer understood it. And over time, we have moved it over the continuum where there is a natural conversation, similar to what we might have with another person. Last question peer i have a last question. What is the ability to get back get past , we used to laugh at vcrs. And now we have best buy and amazon. I think we have a problem with massmarket and the consumer products, no matter how sophisticated they are, they dont know what to buy and use them. How do we get past an adoption curve, for people buying these new devices. I think we are moving into an environment where we have fragmented innovation. We have focused on the products that are widely owned. Very few products are actually owned by 80 or 90 of households. So, i think that we will start to move into niche markets where the saturation is 4050 , and we will start to identify these the ideas that you start with our welldefined, discrete problems. You offer solutions to that. Then you start to overtime, pull those together to create a much more holistic experience. You look at what is happening with driverless cars, we are getting there by solving these discrete problems. Parallel parking, you get parallel parking assist. You get lane assist. Then you get approaching and vehicle with Cruise Control engage, you have adaptive Cruise Control. All of us on, each one of those starts to look like a very discreet, the town of us experience. But them all together and you get a full driverless car experience. I think that is what happens. We are defining these, these welldefined problems, maybe they are only applicable for 20 of households. I do not think that we would necessarily see a massmarket adoption of connected yield mats, because not everybody does yoga. We have propane tanks of that you can connect to the internet so that you can know how full they are. That is not applicable to everyone. But we start to move into these smaller niche markets. I actually have the opposite response. Because the cost of instrumentation is so low, what you actually see is 1000 experiments, 1000 999 of them are chemical, and the one that gets it right how it went to zero 2 million users in a day, for whatever reason they got it right and now consumers essentially tell each other. It is not just broadcasting marketing, like it used to be. It is social media based. They say, this is the one that works. This is the right smartphone, so the right app. Particularly for electronics. Consumers, as a group they figure out the winner. That winter is a winner take all in many of these markets. It is a, one experiment were couple of experiments that exceed where others fail. It didnt cost that much of the first place, so investors are willing to get keep that going. Thank you. [applause] president obama spoke at a summit today. President obama says he does not use terms like islamic extremism, because it would create a false idea of a war with islam, which would help extremists. He says, we are not a war with islam, we are at war with people who convert islam. And he also said that the use of force will not just defeat terrorism and we must work with local communities. David jackson, usa today. The president s remarks will be shown later today. And former florida governor, jeb bush. Now a conversation of internet policy, regulation and startup technology. Representatives from facebook, google, yahoo , trip advisor and huber uber gather together for a panel. [chattering] welcome back. Welcome to the folks who have joined us. My name is nicco mele. I am on the faculty here. I am teaching my first class of the semester as soon as we wrap this up at 1 00. I thought the title of this part of the program is called your next big start up idea, why your internet policy matters. The goal is to get into a discussion about what it means for newer companies and startups, what internet policy ways it can constrain and encourage newer companies entering the space. Before we do that, at the end of the last session, we had a compelling comment from alex jones. Alex mentioned two things. One was the San Francisco Court Judgment during the yelp case. There was another story wanted to mention. They are related. The other one was from china. The leading Financial News organization of china has been charged by the Chinese Government with extorting money from prospective advertisers or clients or businesses in order to prevent or publish certain stories. In other words, the idea is they were extorting money and cooking their reports. That is illegal in china. They were charged with that. This is a great area for gray area for american journalism because it is true news organizations all over the country have long been seeking advertising from people they also cover. But you may not extort. You may not threaten. The issue for the web, it seems to me, is that there are laws that put limits on what news organizations can do in terms of their own reports. Even in the First Amendment environment, there are things you cannot do. The penalty for journalism for publishing something erroneous is libel. Defamation that does damage to people, that is something the courts have said you can make a claim about. As i understand the web attitude about data and all the information they gather and what they put on their sites, there is an argument being made constantly that they have First Amendment rights to do whatever they want. In the case of the yelp data, it was a case of saying we are not going to do this. We are not going to misuse this data. But that is something they reserve the right to say and there is no kind of law that is going to put constraints on that. However, if you are looking at yelp, google, and other entities publishing after a fashion, even though they just call it aggregating, information that could do damage, theyre going to find themselves in the realm of libel if they are going to claim First Amendment protections. I think the question is, where is the control of this vast amount of data going to reside . Is it going to be considered a First Amendment issue or something that comes under a different kind of legal regulation . I think the web world will resist anything that puts constraints on them aside from voluntary ones. I dont know whether that is going to stick. Two questions i would open to the room. One is about the role of the First Amendment in the issues we are talking about around speech and regulation. Many companies and organizations operate in the public sphere and there are speech considerations. The second is, you added at the end, some concern about resistance to regulation in the industry. I dont know if that is the core problem. I am going to interrupt and say the not so enviable task of following the professor and follow the same rules to ask you to keep yourself to one point and introduce yourself at the beginning. I am from the boston globe. It seems to me that you are going about the First Amendment issues, talking about regulation and legal issues. I dont know if the problem gets that far. In media, the classic way of expressing bias is not lying about people or providing distorted information. It is about what you decide to cover and not to cover. You can have a huge impact on businesses, individuals based on whether you show something online or dont show it. One thing i worry about is facebook or google or Online Services could advantage or disadvantage certain groups or Political Parties by simply choosing to show more of that perspective and less of something else. They could advantage a company by showing more data related to that company and less related to somebody else. I dont think you can do anything legally about it. That is the thing that is much more concerning. I would take your point. I think the fact is as the power of these websites is consolidated, as they grow unlike the boston globe, if you dont like the way you are covered, you can go somewhere else. You can go to the new york times, you can simply go online. But if you are a business covered by yelp and you are going to be impacted financially by where you lie in the advertisingdriven yelp rankings and yelp has the right to put you anywhere they want a stun they want based on advertising, that is not the way the boston globe does business. I think that the yelp guys would absolutely claim First Amendment rights. It is true that those lists are clearly capable of doing significant financial damage to someone. There are other responsibilities and considerations that come with First Amendment rights. I would disagree to an extent. If yelp or any other site is not being responsive to the user and they are arbitrarily having the rankings and it is no longer useful, people will no longer use it. There are alternatives. They will go to the sites most useful for the users. They will do other searches. They will look on facebook and asked friends. Every time i am on facebook, someone asks about a good restaurant in boston. That is not an official ranking thing. If any side is not being responsive to users or productive enough in that forum people use alternatives and there are other sites. Libel is geared toward the individual publishes and whether it does damages that can be proven. I just say, if yelp and others are claiming First Amendment protections, that goes with the territory as well. I wonder how that is going to sort itself out. Introduce yourself. Joel kaplan from facebook. Since we were referenced, im going to violate the rule and make two points. I will make them quick. I grew up in boston and love the boston globe. I find it extraordinary the notion that in the internet era where the most Significant Impact has been the small democratization and the ability of individuals to have voice the notion in the times when i grew up in, there was the globe and the herald. If you did not like the globe, it was a good thing that you had the herald. Now on the internet, everyone has a voice. They can have it on facebook yelp, any number of distribution mechanisms. Facebook is trying to provide the information to the individual that is most useful and interesting to them. If we fail, people will stop coming to facebook and will stop using the newsfeed. The second point i want to make that is relevant to the topic of this session of startups is this issue of Liability Protection for Internet Companies that are just showing User Generated Content is probably the single most important protection that led to the proliferation of successful startups and the internet as we know it today. I think it is a great point you brought up to start the conversation. I think you cannot overstate how important the intermediate liability is to the success of the companies around the table and the ones thinking about how they will reach their audience in the first place. If they will be subject to lawsuits for everything there there their millions of users put on the site, those sites will not be created and will not succeed. I want to take that as an opportunity to shift our discussion to the sharing economy. In this session, we are joined by a number of folks, lyft airbnb, uber. I was in germany and took uber home from my restaurant. I woke up Tuesday Morning to take uber to my first meeting and discovered it was not allowed to operate, maybe illegal. Looking at how that has played out in the United States, it seems it is happening on the basis of municipalities. Different municipalities and states taking different approaches from a regulatory perspective. I am wondering about that in the context of, should we have a broader more uniform way of regulating some of the questions arising out of the sharing economy . Or is there some advantage to more of a piecemeal municipal approach at this stage in the game . This is an issue almost every company is facing in some way. Certainly the Public Servants around the table are also dealing with this. Very interested in your thoughts as well. Move the mic closer. Brian worth with uber. The german court ruled uber did not have the proper permits to operate in the country. We are appealing and still operating in germany. Since of the court ruling, signups for uber gone up 590 in germany. The upside to that, people vote with their wallet. I think the german people are showing what they are interested in. They are interested in having Companies Like that operate in their country. We are hoping for a good resolution through the court system. As far as whether one solution or individualized solutions, i think it depends on the country and what the solution is. We have jurisdictions we work well with. We have good relationships with cities. The state of colorado passed peertopeer ridesharing legislation and set up regulations. It is a good regulation. It is something we work under. It is a good thing. There are other states where it is tougher. It is going to depend on the jurisdiction. One catchall solution that does not work is not any better than 50 different ones youre haggling with. My colleagues that run all over dealing with it city by city probably wish there were one solution as opposed to 50. Local government, a lot of times , in our space, this is something local governments have traditionally dealt with as far as the transportation market. Companies like uber, i think we ought to work with those governments to come up with a workable solution. Molly from airbnb. I would like to make an important point when it comes to the sharing economy and regulation. For the most part, the sharing Economy Companies are dealing with regulations that have nothing to do with the internet. Airbnb, all of the regulatory issues we are working on around the world have to do with the laws our hosts have to comply with in their municipality which have nothing to do with the internet. The internet simply enabled the hosts to do it more than ever before. Land use is regulated at the local level. There is no way around that. Landuse laws have good reasons to exist. They protect safety and other things we rely on. Thank goodness airbnb hosts live in safe homes. So, it makes it more complicated to advocate on behalf of our hosts in those cities, but i would echo ubers perspective that we have to work with the cities to figure it out. Hopefully, we can come up with a couple of solutions that might be applicable to thousands of cities around the world. Anybody else want to comment . Chris massey with lyft. I agree wholeheartedly. We have patchwork legislation across the country. We are dealing with laws written before anything like what we operate was contemplated. In some cases, dating back to the 1800s. What we provide to local governments is the opportunity to move into a new generation of innovation. We work collaboratively with cities and states. We work with state legislators and government offices. I imagine congressional members will get involved in the conversation. For the most part, this is a localized issue. We help them understand how to address mobility. What lyft has seen as a desire is a desire to move towards the next level of innovation regulation. We can come to the city of boston and say we want to be able to provide a positive mobility option for citizens. But we can work with you to provide some datasets so you understand how people are moving around the city and become a benefit to the cities as opposed to, you know. Offering some Data Collected for the purpose of Public Policymaking. I think we will have to partner with cities. We are already finding ways to work with these cities. That is just the next step. Very briefly, it is encouraging to hear the sharing Economy Companies talking about collaboration with local governments. I work for the city of boston. We are trying to craft appropriate regulations that address the Public Policy needs we have as well as ensure these kinds of new services can deliver benefits to citizens. The challenge we face is we have to look at these problems not only from the question here is a new service used by a small slice of the population that has certain selfregulating characteristics. When you think about a regulatory regime, that will apply not only to what exists today but also what comes after it, how these services evolve, what new services are created. There needs to be an openmindedness on the part of local governments but also a measure of caution that says what works for Transportation Company x may not be sufficiently protective of the Public Interest in a comes to when it comes to Transportation Company y that starts next week. That is the balance we have. We have found most companies have been very open to working with us at the local level. It is a dialogue that boston is open to having. Adam . Adam connor, i work at brigade. Prior to that, i worked at facebook. These examples of collaboration with government is encouraging. In having worked with state governments, to take a step back when federal agencies were first interested in using facebook. Collaboration is not the word of would use. You have to do many arbitrary things sometimes to work with the government. They were very good people working, pushing things forward. I go to a meeting and the government says there are 32 things you need to change, there is a burden on startups. So to see a little bit more of give and take, it helps. What is nice about the local model, there needs to be responsiveness and modernizing. What is nice about the local model is many people in government are doing good work. If we want to benefit through these new technologies, we need to make sure the rules are considered to modernize them. It is an unfair burden we were willing to take on at facebook. Other startups dont have that ability. That is a tremendous loss for everyone. Tod cohen from ebay. I appreciate what my colleagues and their properly respectful attitude towards potential government regulation of their services and the need to collaborate at the local level. I wholeheartedly endorse them to do that. But with the reality that there are very entrenched economic interests that have every desire to put startups like that out of business. They work actively and have political power and engage in the worst type of regulatory models. We want to have a level Playing Field is the classic example. Therefore, we should have unnecessary burdens placed on new entrants that had nothing to do with the service underlying that. I am pleased to see what the german people are responding with. It is what people want. I would make sure you try to get in early and inoculate yourself. Try to make sure you find regulators not only captive but that understand what is going on. What happens in the end is, it is an example of fraternity hazing. We got hazed. When you join, you will get hazed when you want to join the fraternity. I appreciate everyone has the right attitude of wanting to collaborate and work with government. Lets be clear. There are a lot of people that want to stop the services and will spend effort and political power to harm these businesses. That is a great point. We are talking about startups and why internet policy matters to startups. We are thinking about every company in the room is pretty young compared with the much more established industries you are frequently dealing with on policy and regulation. It seems there are two challenges. One is a challenge of entrenched industry trying to protect their turf from challenges from unexpected quarters. Another might be a generational gap among decisionmakers. On monday when i was in germany, i was meeting with a group of very senior german officials who had no idea what uber was. They wanted me to show it to them on my phone. This goes to adams comment about the challenges facing these institutions. What are the right strategies . What have some of the experiences been dealing with government institutions that may have a generational gap in understanding these issues and experiencing them . Coupled with some organizations, companies, comcast has a decadeslong history in washington. What kind of environment that creates for shaping Public Policy . Adam with google. I thought tods comments were right on. If you are only playing the inside game with policymakers, there is a good chance newer companies and industries are going to lose simply on the basis of older industries having been there longer. Not just the taxicab or hotel industry, for the content industry, telecommunications firms. These are companies that are regulated. They have been players for policymakers for a long time. I do think that one tool that has been effective is showing policymakers when they are out of tune with consumers. The hipaasopa battle is the quintessential example. That has an inside game debate. It was not until it became an outside game with consumers weighing in that policymakers put the brakes on what they were doing. Unfortunately, i think that tactic is probably going to have to be used. In the wake of that, we have observed policymakers in the u. S. Are extremely cautious about legislation becoming the next one. They dont want their bills to get that. They dont want to be the recipient of thousands of phone call saying they are on the wrong side of something. There are going to need to be moments of things where newer Companies Confront policymakers saying it is us on the side of consumers. I think one of the scariest things a policymaker can encounter is they are not on the side of consumers. Often switch sides quickly to avoid that situation. Most policymakers will not last very long if they are out of touch with what the voters want. I will add on. I seem to remember getting an email from the uber may be a year ago, it was about the challenges that they were having in washington dc. I seem to remember this happening. They were going to their customers to say you need to be engaged. And i think that they did a terrific decision to hire david plus, he is very familiar with that. To my point, as what you mean that is a tactic that he is familiar with . Grassroots organizing. As it companies it start to engage in debates, may be playing the outside game, it is mindboggling to me the amount of power that these companies have these large memberships with. It plays to corporate interest. They can leverage these lists to advocate for these interest. It is not good or bad. I agree wholeheartedly with grassroots advocacy, but a unique challenge to startups regarding a is, particularly ones that are smaller, they dont have enough people to do grassroots advocacy on their behalf when it is just an idea. In addition to the advocacy, education is also really important. Airbnb has invested a lot in sharing, studying and sharing information that the activity has. To misspell to dispel a law of ms. Information that is out there and to inform policymakers so that they are not relying on an antidote anecdote from their nephew that used it a couple of weeks ago. That is a challenge for startups who may be dont have the capability or skill to share that information. That is so they can make informed decisions. I just want to jump on that point. The power that companies have it to mobilize themselves, it is actually a way to Keep Companies honest about what issues they take on and how they mobilize their users. Our people will not follow us unless they understand how the positions that we are taking have an impact on them. At betsy we are doing at etsy our users are concerned about the slow speed of internet on their Small Businesses. They are crafting pillows that say, protect and open internet. They are doing things like that, and that makes us feel very confident that when we mobilize our users that they have are back. We are not diverging from our community. I think that is true for a lot of companies at this table. We have to our institutions have to be technologically stable to some extent. We have to give them capacity. One of the ways that we can do this is by giving places Like Congress, staff. Why dont we have a code for america. We might need to reinvent knowledge for the Public Interest. Members of congress who often they often dont have a basic situational awareness. The technological process confidence the more complexity migrates to them military services. This is a classical explanation of what has happened with the nsa. When you do the technical confidence and the rewards of Public Service a lot of responsibilities that are too hard for the civilians is going to go there. And they have had a Computer Scientist and in these tools for decades. There are probably a couple of hundred, the couple of hundred military folks in congress. When you need expertise, you ask for them. The other problem is that congress is working at 60 of 1979 levels of staff. Meanwhile, almost 50 of house staff is obligated to the district. Unless we create a high quality Decision Support system, for our legislative branch, in the state, it is not going to appear. It will continue to look like this proprietary and information cartel. That is it that is really what congress looks like. I say this with a great deal of love for this institution, i am obsessed with it, but it really needs this kind of empathy right now. I am so glad that you are here and you can see, the executive branch has a been the focus of attention, but it is running into a wall when it comes to legislative branch capacity, for even understanding these problems. Use it and you ask the person sitting next to you, it could be someone from a corporation, it could be technical i. T. Questions, we have to provide them with people. That is really important as we think about modernizing our government and its digital services. The reason that it is relevant to entrepreneurs and startups, it is the government can be a platform. We are opening up data as fuel so that is one of the many things that the president ial innovations work on. One of the challenges for the public space, in the internet age, is that when you look at the private sector, through startups, the disruption of old Business Models that can be reinvented because of new technology. The government, particularly the federal government, an institution Like Congress, you will not see that level of disruption at the same pace. It manifests itself in my view, with things like Approval Ratings. The Approval Ratings that persist through a majority and a republican majority, those are different ideologies. It is a process rejection. I think that is an important issue for our country and programs like this and others. I think the United Kingdom has done exciting work while they modernize legislative activity. Think it is a challenge for our community. At a certain point, how can you regulate uber if you live in a motorcade . At a certain point we need our legislative institutions and executive leaders to be connected with the reality of our society. It is, with the rise of television, the rise of radio, i think we will get there. I think that the issue of relation regulation, through the existence of technology in the decades, it is unique. It protects the disruption of itself. You see a regulatory response as a weapon to protect itself. The Industry Needs to keep the public on its side, because without that it will never be able to defeat those static interest. Think about things like self driving cars. I think they are good for society on a variety of levels. How will that affect the insurance agency, the tax industry, the trucking industry, all these other industries. It will be a massive fight and you can see the companies and is rumored deal with things like that on a daily basis. I do not think that that Technology Industry will succeed unless they protect the interest of their users so they can leverage that any modern corporate grassroots organizing. I think that there is a potential for the industry and the government. There are ways in which a service like lift could share data with the city in which they operate and perhaps the city improve delivery. We have done experiments and boston, i should say products during this session, i got a notice about the broken glass that i reported on the sidewalk by my house using our city at app had been cleaned up a few hours after i reported it. That is about recognizing that people expect a standard that is defined by what the Technology Industry has created. I would ask somebody and government, two people who work in the Technology Department look for a scum a reach out to us. We have obligations, but a desire to up our game and match expectations that people have. Instead of thinking about it as how do we avoid this regulation, how do we avoid this or that there are opportunities for people to come out of this delivering a great product whether they be citizens or paying customers. X i have a question, or maybe a statement, that here lately there is a libertarian moment and politics. Maybe the rise of startups drives that. When you look at what is going on with over uber and lyft, there is a pressure on government on the way to regulate transportation services. I think about this, where maybe the government will have to rethink a lot of things. One that ultimately lead to a general push to increasingly deregulate sectors of the economy, to make it easier for companies to start up and for people to use the internet. Maybe it will deregulate trend traditional industries. Is it going to be in ad an adhoc basis . I am from trip advisor. I think what you may see is consumer appetite. There is a willingness to have more experimentation. I think what you are seeing with airbnb and others, there is a bumping up against regulation. We are supportive of those new technologies, being able to aggregate, getting people to sign up. That power has not existed up until now. That is an amazing opportunity for an entrepreneur to be able to find a market and demand that is picked up by the populace. As that proliferate we have seen in many instances, all of these things over the past 10 years, there has been a little bit of lets see how this plays out. That is something that local government can do. I do think that there is tremendous opportunity in the 35,000 municipalities that airbnb is in, to test and learn what we do is a technology company. There is an amazing lab around the world to be able to see what works and doesnt work. I think that can be applied to the federal government and what youre talking about. It can be done with congress how boston implements technology and uses it. Taking the best from what boston can do, chicago, new york city and seeing what works. I dont know if it will work from a topdown approach. It is something that we could reasonably look forward to. Juliet, then margaret, then adam. I want to come back to what matt raised about technologies, thinking about technological unemployment. Maybe talk a little bit about the economic context in which all of this is happening. Because the sharing Economy Companies particularly, but Tech Companies in general as well they claim a lot of public good effects. And if we think about the massive employment destroying capabilities of these technologies, that is the flip side to efficiency. They are really you really have to own that part of disruptive as well. And ask the question, what about technological unemployment. Something that came up yesterday, and it really wasnt addressed well, it is true that new jobs are created. But if you think about the whole picture of Economic Analysis and you look at the last two centuries and how technological unemployment got absorbed, it worked in two ways. It was growth, rapidly growing economies. And secondly, massive reduction in hours of work. We went from average hours being 3000 hours to under 2000. Neither of those in the United States, neither of those conditions offered at the moment. We are a mature economy we havent slow growth. We have a new report about the member economies. We are facing a future of low gdp growth rates over the next decades. We have big barriers to the reduction of hours in the United States. We cannot just assume that we are going to be able to absorb. We really it is if this sector wants to be able to not only promote gains in the narrow but also have the whole thing work out in a way that doesnt yield public good, we have to be thinking about those larger labor markets. I will hop in here. Some of this is the way we want to look at the market. If youre looking at something and we have maxed out what we are capable of doing in the market place, i think that this is a bigger problem. But if you look at it as, the pie is so much bigger than we realized. I will give you an example, our chicago team reported back in 2013, that they added 25,000 rides to the economy in chicago. They do not take toys 5000 from taxicabs 25,000 from taxicabs, it was 25,000 more rides for the city. There is a potential for those services. The demand has only been out there. Now we have the technology to actually meet the demand. It changes the entire economic makeup. We are on the cusp of an economic seachange. The way that the economy works there was a time when a horse and buggy was on the road next to a car. The world is changing and that way and technology is allowing the change to happen. I think that there are valid concerns, but as it grows, there is potential for solutions to be there. If you stifle the growth at a fear because we do not know the answer of what it is, we are stuck and we will never move forward. We are trying to encourage the idea among economists and employers that increased wages are a good sign for economic growth. I also also think about using your customers, mobilizing them to affect policy change. That can work both ways too. It can lead to people who use platforms for income and employment to effectively unionize, and a nontraditional sense. In a nontraditional sense. I wasnt going to make a point, maybe three points back. I will briefly say there was a story a couple of years ago about minimum wage and people stuck in these jobs, and the growing protests and they find and we find ourselves subsidizing. But the technology that we are talking about is going to make it virtually impossible for these protest to pay off in the long run. You already have things, maybe fast food restaurants that are moving to tablets and things and what you will see is, i think, the wages will remain stagnant for a large part of the population. The technology that we are talking about is part of the problem and nobody has figured out how to work around that. I do not think that there is an easy answer. But they are the answer. The technology is the answer. That is the point i was trying to make. I was in San Francisco, i took a ride to where i was going and the lady who picked me up, her husband came home from work, she would go out, she wasnt working fulltime and she turned to the lyft cap app off when i got in but it is giving people an opportunity to supplement your lifestyle and income in a way that is convenient for you. This is the opportunity. This is an something as Holding People back, it is expanding opportunity. The ability to work three jobs instead of two. But it is offering flexibility and it may mean that the workforce will have to change. And maybe the expectations of the workforce will change. You have a Small Business that you are running on ebay while you are also producing articles that run on the Yahoo Developer Network and you are doing multiple things that allows you to be interested and allows you to be a stayathome mom and work out of your house. I think that there are certainly problems with the transition. From transition period where everyone goes to work from 95 to this sort of economy. But i agree with brian, there are as many concerns as opportunities. I do not think we know yet where those opportunities are going to arrive. I think that generally the technology and platform that we all use creates opportunities. That is the case and are lobbying. One of the things that has been fun about working for yahoo is there is an opportunity to educate lawmakers about policies that they never thought of technologies that they have never used. You are fighting in an entrenched industry, but you are also not providing just one policy answer. You may have three policy answers. Yet this is down and have a conversation with lawmakers. You talk about concerns, how do you make it work there isnt one right answer. There is a huge opportunity to do a lot and i think that part of that is bringing the consumers along. You are making sure that they are part of the dialogue and you are starting to see that in terms of advocacy in the industry. We have juliet, david, and then matthew. We cannot argue this on the basis of anecdotes. There is little doubt that the technologies have labor displacing impacts. That is the power of them. That is the efficiency. It is not to say that it over uber one that create more rides, but there are questions. What is the rate of growth . That is essential. And, we cannot forget that every additional percentage point of gdp growth puts a certain amount of Greenhouse Gases into the atmosphere. It is a very close relationship and we are coming close to the point where we will have those caps. That is a whole other new constraint on this, thinking about what is going on at the level of the nation as a whole, the globe as a whole and secondly, what is happening to hours of work . If you do not have reduction in hours, you cannot absorb technological unemployment. It has been proven throughout history. It is not to say that we should not have the new technologies it is to say that we have to think about the introduction into a bigger framework land just local regulations around taxis. It is about climate policy, and all of those things. We need to look at the big picture. To make sure that we are where are the gains going . That may not just be theone particular Internet Company may not want to get engaged in that. What the community as a whole has two. But the community as a whole has to. Precisely because of the backlash. Im with salesforce, david simon. I do think there is a valid point that when you have Rapid Technology change, you have rapid employment displacement. One of the places where this needs to be reevaluated is the educational front. This country is very much ignored Stem Education. For most of a generation. We have yet to really try to take advantage of the technology. Interns of Stem Education and people being displaced so they can get new jobs in his new economy, the idea of sending people out to Community Colleges which by the way Community Colleges are very valuable but is relatively inexpensive to educate someone when you have the internet. I think all of these need to be taken advantage of. It goes back to an earlier part of the problem. Policymakers tend to get stuck in a certain way of thinking. Whatever their perspective is. You have is real dichotomy of the twentysomethings who are the people doing a lot of the work for the policy Decision Maker is somebody looks like me, it really very entrenched in a certain way of doing things because that is the lady have done it for two generations. Way they had done it for two generations. In terms of policymakers, i think the single biggest thing policymakers dont get is the difference in economics between a brandnew niche and a niche that is just three or four years old. When we have seen over and over again with the internet and digital media, these spaces lock in quickly. As especially true with sharing economy niche is. Those are essentially market makers. We have 300 years plus experience, so marketmaking leashes becomeniches become that way quickly. If i want to drive a car for a living how many Ridesharing Companies will survive . I would that a months salary not three. Probably not even two. This quickly becomes an issue where the economic concentration becomes selfsustaining. It is very difficult for individuals to bargain on their own with these entrenched terms. Are even if two or three Ridesharing Companies exist there may be dozens of Limo Companies and Taxi Companies that they have replaced. It is still a consolidation in the market. And by the time you are down to two, it is very easy for them to collude. You dont by the time you have a handful of players, you dont even have to do a conspiracy to make sure you are offering the same sorts of deals. I just wanted to jump on the point about educating the workforce. I think it is true these technologies are disrupting the labor market and creating new opportunities. 42 of our sellers sold on at sea for the first time etsy for the first time. They would not have started business otherwise. I think it is more than the Stem Education. It is important but builds fewer jobs, i think, then building out some of the work around entrepreneurship and repairing people for a new and changing economy. The economy has been changing for a long time. How do we help prepare the workers that have been displaced for that new world of informal entrepreneurship is a bigger question that doesnt fall just to Tech Companies. I just have to Say Something about the stem comment. It goes right down the street. , at harvard law, a book saying that it doesnt exist. That america id of stem educated workers and that these socalled panics about the shortage are a traditional cycle that has happened time and again. In fact, if you look at employment rates it shows that there doesnt seem to be a problem because wages have been relatively stagnant even for them. The idea that we can educate our way out is highly questionable and we need to look at that too. Once the relation between Stem Education and some of the concerns in the Tech Industry about immigration . We are right here in a moment where we arethe president is considering executive action on immigration. We have had the u. S. Trying to take an active role in the push on the immigration front. Does anyone want to comment on immigration and the role that is taking . A scam to keep wages low. Sure. Yeah. My ceo, Mark Zuckerberg at facebook, has taken a very active role in trying to push for comprehensive immigration reason reform over the past year. Plus, there are many components of Immigration Reform. The one you are focused on related to stem has to do with what most of the Companies Operating in this space do perceive as a shortfall of the types of highly skilled trained engineers. Computer scientists who can produce at the level that is required to remain globally competitive. I think most of the companies here will interested in reading the work of professor tenenbaum but as a daytoday matter, they know that they are not able to find from the u. S. Trained workforce of u. S. Warned people born people, a sufficient number of skilled engineers to Keep Companies innovating and competing. That is where Immigration Reform comes in. We have, at facebook, we probably get 50 a year of the temporary visas for high skilled workers that we have given job offers to. Many who are educated in u. S. Universities but foreignborn. We do a lottery every year. As a global company, if we cant ring those people to the United States to work with our engineers in california, we probably will still give them a job. We will put it somewhere else. It is not good for the United States or our economy or building and maintaining the sense of excellence we have in Silicon Valley and boston and other places. Taking facebook as an example but it is true for a lot of these companies. We have close to 80 of our workforce in the united. 85 of our users are outside of the united dates. That is the kind of structure i think we want to make gain maintain. We want usbased companies serving the world. So i think the prospect of Immigration Reform is looking dim, i would say, in the congress. The president is considering executive action we are hopeful that he does that, and tries to address all aspects of the problem of the undocumented situation and assorted jump workers. This whole issue of immigration makes the case for the Tech Community to get into more longterm policy. It is part of a much bigger systemic problem, where issues like governments and counterterrorism issues. It is getting wrapped up in that. Youre going to see more and more definitions of resilience. And mass population movements are part of it. This Community Takes on this whole specific problemsolving of complex sorting and filtering of challenges we are facing as a global society. I would argue i think it will be hard to get out of this. It can just be about these as your company. I was surprised as someone who has been working in washington for 14 years, the most noticeable thing is they took out advise on Environmental Issues that you would desperately need. That is our relationship based. D. C. Is a city like a junior high. [laughter] theres the jocks and homecoming queens and the nerds. There is just a moment right now and such a need for people to intentionally bring these problemsolving minded folks together and figure out new ways to do this. It is not going to look like these old models of lobbying. Insight congress that looks like the tendency to use a Campaign Technology for governing what is doing is making governing look like campaigning. People who look Like Congress can see that it can be petition sites and it cant beit starts sentiment not substance. Unless we figure out to privilege certain kinds of information that match institutional functions, like what is this subcommittee responsible for . That is the information it needs at the right time. My dream is we will move towards a future where this community with commercial interest can reserve or create new rules. I feel like everyone every time it is these processed roles that are missing and really missing for civic and social norms. Adam is a great person attack about this because at facebook he was pioneering that method to educate members of congress to communicate with constituents. One thing i want to point out is , all of these observations about ways he can educate and change institutions make sense. We also as organizations need to operate in a world in which we need today. As the difference between Silicon Valley approach and washingtons approach. Silicon Valley Companies see systems and want to go around them or change them or disrupt them. Unfortunately, for now, Congress Still operates as a democratic body with members to can go home to their district. While they may care a lot about what people in Silicon Valley think, they care a lot more about what the members of their district thinks. As you think about how to get policy changes, you still have to change the minds of the people at home before members of congress are going to be responsive to them. The strategy of the adthat was one ad as part of a broader effort to try to bigger build the support in the districts to give members of congress the fortitude to take what might be a popular vote in Silicon Valley by a difficult vote in their home district into this makes mix. We will have to try to convince people in some oldfashioned ways, using new tools. To talk a little bit about the portfolio it seems confused. I used to work in congress. I love the institution. I think many of the things he suggested are good. It also has to be an institutional us to save itself. That is not evident in congress. They find you tenure contracts and they dont break them. They sign these 10 year contracts and they dont break them. You cant save someone that doesnt want to be saved. When you talk about comprehensive solutions, when i look around the table, many of them have deep connections to washington. When you look at some of these issues and say you need to be more involved in immigration that is why we have government. This is not the goal google job to solve the refugee crisis. If that becomes a thing they have to do now, there certainly willing to play a role. But that is the role of government. To put the lead the burden on us while trying to save institutions we think are broken, there has to be willingness. There are good people in government. But, you want both things. We have to save the institution that might not want saving and also help make it better. If you lay a confusing argument. It feels like a confusing argument. I am definitely confused. One of the innovations and a number of these companies represent is reputational networks. Theres a great executive example that in the executive branch. There was a recent article about how 10,000 employees are using gift topgifthub. Is a way to share ideas and have dialogue. 10,000 employees from folks in that white house ali down to regulatory employees who are collaborating. You had these reputational mechanisms helping sort input from the public and other federal agencies. A lot does happen from congress but a lot happens from regulatory agencies. What im excited to see is the modernization of regulatory agent in the coming decade agencies in the coming decade. The platforms are developing an open read write api. You dont just have to go to that website, but advocacy platforms, grassroots everyone and contribute. Can contribute. We can use technology to sort and wayweigh in the rulemaking process. Which is how we govern. I would like to add on top of Immigration Reform which is something that affects the economy. When you look at Internet Companies as a whole they are all relatively new companies. Young in their development and certainly new to politics. I would argue that when it comes to Immigration Reform, our companies have done more than their share to push this debate forward and have it be a constructive conversation. It is not something that happened than one congress or one year and has been many years since the last reform in the 80s. Internet companies deserve a lot of credit for not just picking up the mantle and what matters most in business interests. They pick up the mantle of what is best for broader reform. Also, on why internet policy matters to companies who are still startups, there are a lot of issues. Policymakers have to make a decision. Our they going to protect industries that have been around . Part of the great thing about our economy is we are coming up with new and better ways and improving our society and economy as a whole. I think the internet is a great catalyst. One issue we have not raised is the issue of patent reform. We have seen a surge in entities known that have gone after ladder Internet Companies and become starters. You have to create a business and it said he had to deal with court cases. I want we have around the table people from industry academics, Public Servants. We have a moment here where we can have a discussion about what is missing. What do we not know . Giving broader context to policy issues. In your mind, what are some important areas for research or discussion . As we look forward over the next couple of years, what are areas that need more attention so that we can make good policies . I think some of that has to start with education. And engagement. I think that is one of the reasons why you are seeing Internet Companies come together and start groups like the internet association. I think that is why you are seeing sharing economies coming forward. For government to make good policy and be thoughtful about it and write policy that works i think now is the time for engagement and education so that the groundwork is therefore smartphones things that need to be written. Versus where i think we have been for the last few years which is reactionary policy, not necessarily based on a real understanding of the industry issues. I think that is a joint responsibility for both government and our industry to really start that and continue that dialogue. I was going to say, from a local level a lot of our challengeswe can articulate what goals are. But is very hard for us to get good data about how effectively or ineffectively the systems that are being built by some of the more Innovative Companies actually do or dont achieve those goals. Consequently it gets done a lot in the realm of anecdote. Of course, the companies in this space have a vested interest in releasing certain data that health a story. I think it is an area for people interested in Public Policy research to look at and say what is the overall impact of the Liberty Service alternative to live Delivery Service alternative, to transportation ability, to cost, and supply. And actually give us hard data we can look at to see how well these services do or dont supply support the policy objectives. I think carbon accounting is a really important mention of the data possibilities. There are a lot of claims particularly in sharing economy about the foot lowering aspects of these activities. At the moment we dont know much about how true those claims are. Airbnb did a study. We are going to be doing more and more carbon accounting in the coming decades. This is an area where the whole industry could get out. In theory it could be a happy story to tell. Also to be a model for the kind of putting Accounting Systems into place and being proactive about it. I think it would be fantastic. I have never encountered a politician who was antiinnovation and very few are antiinternet. And yes, innovation as we know it has effects, has consequences. We talked about one of them. It can be disruptive and cause shifts in the workforce. The difficulty that a lot of us are engaged in Public Policy are engaged in is oftentimes there is a Quick Reaction from policymakers. We were for innovation until we started seeing these disruptive effects, so now we need to put the brakes on that. These are all valid questions. We have a structure of labor laws, of child safety laws privacy laws and we might not agree on the structure and specifics. Those laws generally reflect a consensus that those things are important to us. The format that they take may be different from the way it is taken in the past. I am not sure that protecting a taxi medallion system is the way to ensure that we have a vibrant middle class. I do not know his answer is. Thats i dont know what the answer is. I think that one possibility is to it saw things play out. I am struck by the fact that a couple of years ago, walmart based criticism for having a lot of lower paid workers. In part because of pressure they were facing they voluntarily acted to give more Robust Health benefits. They were thinking we are a Large Employer of middleclass people. We think this is the responsible thing to do. Some of these internet businesses become more mature. Companies will grapple with those effects as well. I feel like with respect to policy there can be a do no harm approach. Not from acting too quickly, but letting some of these things play out. Some of the old values that informed older laws will manifest themselves in new ways. Maybe more modern ways. Just sitting here i was struck and molly started off by saying a lot of these debates are not about the internet, but about other aspects of what is happening on the ground. Its true. We have been spending the session talking about things that have nothing to do with met neutrality or any of these issues that people say lets let the nerds talk about that. Youre seeing Power Companies changing society more rapidly than society can keep up with. And then institutions that Govern Society can keep up with. I walk away concerned about how were actually going to fix these institutions. At the local level you see people going in and that makes me optimistic but when we look at congress, i do not know. I applied those working on it, but i dont think you have figured it out either. One thing i would ask all of you to keep in mind is we definitely in washington feel an attitude of, government is broken, lets avoid them. Just ask yourself to the early moderators point. What we do in 2030 . What are the things that will help institutions improve . You are forcing a lot of changes in society that has impacts far beyond what happens. What happens with all of these people out of work . Our institutions cannot keep up with that rate of change. A real positive note to end on. [laughter] before we wrap up and i know people have some flights to catch. We do have some people who have not had a chance to talk. I just want to open it up. Chris or kerry or, who else . Who else has not had a chance. Do you want to add anything . I am from trip advisor. I guess just on a more optimistic note. There are some of these companies that are Disruptive Companies that are starting to take care, they are not technically employees. I guess contractors. The minimum wage is 11. 20 per hour. They are trying to treat their task as well by directing them and getting good deals on Health Insurance and cell phones and tools they might use in the tasks. I think with companies that are working through this. I know uber faced protests by the drivers and seattle. Because they are they dont think their pay is high enough. I am optimistic that there will be a good outcome. I would not want to get into an uber if i felt the driver was losing money and is really unhappy. My driver said we are alive, it is wonderful. [laughter] but any